* * * * *

[Illustration:  “BED, SIR?  HERE IS A GENUINE JACOBEAN, FOR WHICH WE ARE ASKING ONLY TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY GUINEAS.”

“WELL, TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH I WASN’T WANTING TO BUY ONE.  BUT I CAN’T GET A BED ANYWHERE IN LONDON, AND I WAS JUST WONDERING IF YOU COULD LET ME SLEEP IN IT TO-NIGHT.”]

* * * * *

DOMESTIC STRATEGY.

I will admit that it was I who gave Mrs. Brackett the idea.  But to blame me for the very unfortunate denouement is ridiculous.

I met Mrs. Blackett in Sloane Street.

“I’m on my way to a registry-office,” she said.  “No, not that kind of registry-office; I’m not about to commit bigamy.  I mean the kind where domestic assistants are sought, but mostly in vain.  I suppose you don’t know of a cook, a kitchenmaid, a housemaid, a parlourmaid and a tweeny?”

I confessed that I did not.  But I told her the story of some friends of mine who had been in a similar position and had succeeded in reorganising their establishment by an ingenious strategy.

“The wife went away to stay with friends in the country,” I said, “and the husband went to the registry-office, representing himself to be a bachelor, a rather easy-going bachelor.  It seems that such establishments are popular with the few domestic servants still at large.  After a short time he let it be known that he was really married, but separated from his wife; and after a further interval he called his household together and with tears in his voice informed them that he and his wife had composed their differences and that she was returning to him on the morrow.  I understand that it was a complete success.”

Mrs. Brackett was very much impressed by this story.

“If I don’t find anyone to-day I shall try it,” she said as we parted.

She did not find anyone, and, she did try it.  She left home the following day, as I learnt from Brackett when I met him a week later.

“Your tip’s come off absolutely A 1,” he said, “and I’m most awfully obliged.  The worry was getting on my wife’s nerves.  As it is I filled up my establishment a couple of days ago and, as everything is going well, I’ve wired my wife to come home to-morrow.”

“Have you broken it to the maids?” I asked doubtfully.

“Oh, no; but I shall just tell ’em in the morning,” said Brackett.  “That’ll be all right.”

I felt at the time that he was being far too precipitate, but he seemed so confident that I didn’t interfere.  The sequel was disastrous.

In the first place Brackett, in his casual way, omitted to say anything about his being married until Mrs. Brackett was actually in the house.  Even then he seems to have been rather ambiguous in his explanations.  Anyway the new maids were, or affected to be, profoundly shocked.  They intimated that they would never have entered so irregular an establishment had they known, and departed en masse after spreading a scandal among the tradespeople which will take the Bracketts twenty years to live down.